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Book review

Both a challenge to mathematically inclined readers and a useful supplementary text for high school and college courses, One Hundred Problems in Elementary Mathematics presents an instructive, stimulating collection of problems. Many problems address such matters as numbers, equations, inequalities, points, polygons, circles, ellipses, space, polyhedra, and spheres. An equal number deal with more amusing or more practical subjects, such as a picnic ham, blood groups, rooks on a chessboard, and the doings of the ingenious Dr. Abracadabrus.Are the problems in this book really elementary? Perhaps not in the lay reader’s sense, for anyone who desires to solve these problems must know a fair amount of mathematics, up to calculus. Nevertheless, Professor Steinhaus has given complete, detailed solutions to every one of his 100 problems, and anyone who works through the solutions will painlessly learn an astonishing amount of mathematics. A final chapter provides a true test for the most proficient readers: 13 additional unsolved problems, including some for which the author himself does not know the solutions.